


More Asimov

by stele3



Series: Asimov [1]
Category: Bandom, MCR - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:03:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3





	More Asimov

Bob opens the door to his apartment, stares at her for a moment, then yells over his shoulder, "Lindsey's not dead!"  
  
"What? How do you know?" Frank calls.  
  
"'Cause she's home. So either she's alive or we need to break out the axe." They have a battle axe by the couch, for use in cases of robbers or zombies.  
  
"Dude, seriously?" Frank's head pokes around the corner from the kitchen. His gapes at Lindsey as she rolls her eyes and shoulders past Bob. "Holy fucking shit. What the fuck, bitch!" The rest of him, clad in a kimono that hangs open to reveal saggy boxer briefs, emerges around the corner to stand with his hands on his hips, scowling at her.  
  
Somewhere in the apartment's smoky depths, Jamia yells something. "It's Lindsey," Bob yells back, padding down the hall. "Guess we gotta put all her shit back in her room."  
  
"Home sweet fucking home," Lindsey mutters, grabbing the cigarette out of Frank's mouth as he shoos her after Bob.  
  
"We were fuckin' worried," Frank squawks. "Where the hell were you for two goddamn weeks, huh?"  
  
Jamia and Kitty sit in front of the TV, all four of their legs kicked out straight in front of them to rest on top of that ugly-ass armadillo table. Kitty's got a giant bowl of cereal balanced on her stomach and they're trading off the spoon. They both pause to shoot Lindsey disapproving and quizzical glances, respectively.  
  
"Where the fuck have you been?" Kitty asks, her nose crinkling up as if in annoyance. Lindsey knows her well enough to recognize the worry and relief underneath.  
  
"See," Lindsey says to Frank, "with her, I actually believe she's gonna kick my ass."  
  
He flips her off as he flops down beside his wife. "So?" Jamia prompts, in a voice that reminds Lindsey that Jamia has a battle axe within reaching distance.  
  
"Okay," Lindsey says, taking a deep breath. "Would you believe that I've spent the last two weeks living with a reclusive genius who builds tiny robots from spare parts and it was totally fucking awesome right up to the point he started building a sex robot that sort of looked like me?"  
  
They all stare, lined up on the couch. It reminds her of that first day, waking up with the munchkins circled around her; the memory makes her feel really fucking sad all of a sudden, like she's gained twenty pounds and all of it's gone straight to her heart.  
  
-o-  
  
They play a show at the Steel Jungle. A couple of assholes in the audience rile Frank up until he's sweating and spitting, animalistic; when she goes to do a backbend, he comes over and starts humping her face. Lindsey figures that makes his crotch fair game, so she bites him. He yelps, swinging away and cackling.  
  
Afterwards Jamia punches her arm -- "Fuckin' endangering the future of the Nestor line" -- and at some point Kitty throws a bowl of chips at somebody's head and Frank demands that she buy him shots as reparations for 'crotch trauma.' Lindsey still feels like there's a big block of something in her chest that all the shows in the world can't get rid of, and she basically empties her wallet onto the bartender.  
  
After that her memory gets kind of fuzzy.  
  
-o-  
  
Someone's poking her arm. It triggers some kind of sense-memory -- she doesn't remember that night when Gerard had dragged her drunk ass in his house, but she'd bet that there was some stick-poking first -- and she sits up despite the feeling that her brain hasliquefied and will dribble out her ears. "Gee?"  
  
It's Jamia. She raises an eyebrow. "No. This is your 'hey, are you still alive' check."  
  
"Ugh. Thanks."  
  
"But if that's the first word out of your mouth, then I think I wanna hear about this guy."  
  
Lindsey flops back and immediately wants to kill herself. She decides to hold very, very still for the rest of the day. The bed dips asJamia sits down beside her. Lindsey shuts her eyes and hopes that Jamia will take the hint.  
  
"Baby, don't even try." Jamia's totally smirking at her, Lindsey can hear it in her voice. "I know all about emotional reticence. I've been with Frank Iero since high school."  
  
"So what you're saying is, you're totally qualified to advise me about shitty life decisions." Jamia bounces in place, making the couch wobble and move. Lindsey groans. "Shit, okay."  
  
"So?"  
  
"So -- I don't know. It's stupid. We didn't even get that far with...stuff. He was just a neat guy."  
  
"'Neat,'" Jamia says heavily.  
  
"F'k'off. He was like, interesting. Special."  
  
"Okay." Jamia's totally smirking again. Lindsey needs new friends, except she's pretty sure no one else would put up with her drunk, starving-artist ass. "So what went wrong?"  
  
"I told you. He was building a sexbot that looked kind of like me."  
  
"So a little _too_ special?"  
  
"I guess."  
  
Jamia hums a bit then asks, "You sure about not wanting to see him again?"  
  
Lindsey starts to nod then stops. She opens one eye to peer at Jamia. After a moment she says, "He's been calling my cell, hasn't he?"  
  
Jamia holds it up. "'Gee' has been calling for the last hour."  
  
Lindsey bits her lip then sticks her hand out. Jamia raises an eyebrow, but hands it over.  
  
-o-  
  
Gerard meets her at the garage door. He's a blur of movement, rocking from foot to foot and wringing his hands and tugging his hair into truly alarming shapes. "Hi," he says then turns and walks quickly through the garage. Lindsey follows, warily.  
  
In the kitchen, Gerard stops and puts his finger over his lips. His eyes are big and worried. The sound of the television drifts from the living room, occasionally interrupted by low voices.  
  
"What's up?" Lindsey whispers.  
  
"I activated Alicia today," Gerard mumbles. He's chewing on the nail of his thumb.  
  
"Who?" Then she catches on. She tries to keep her voice light. "What, did she go killer-robot on you?"  
  
"No, no," Gerard says distractedly, tugging at his hair again and giving himself multiple horns. "It's just -- I'm so bad at people, Lindsey! You have to help. I -- I mean, I kind of sort of based her on you, you'll know how she -- "  
  
Lindsey kind of wants to punch him in the mouth. "I really, really can't help you there, dude."  
  
Gerard looks like she just ran over his puppy, or one of his 'bot -- and oh _shit_ , she shouldn't think crap like that, it makes her shiver, too, and damn she's screwed. "But," Gerard says, his voice barely above a whisper. "I mean, you. Did you...get bored?"  
  
"No, I didn't get fucking _bored_ , Gerard." Lindsey rolls her eyes despite herself and says gently, "You've got to get past that, Gee. You're a lot of things, but you're not boring."  
  
Gerard blinks and his gaze slides back to the living room. "Mikey gets bored. That's why -- he likes you a lot, so I -- but what if I screwed up? I mean, I did okay with Mikey even after his personality chip malfunctioned, but I, like, what if I made her wrong? What if he doesn't like her?"  
  
"Wait," Lindsey says. "What?"  
  
Gerard doesn't hear her, he's babbling quietly and peeking around the edge of the doorway. "I tried to make them compatible but, like, I can't _program_ them to like each other. Well, I could, but that'd be really fuckin' creepy, you know?"  
  
"It would," Lindsey agrees dumbly. She kind of needs to sit down, but it looks like Gerard has cannibalized the kitchen chairs for something. "Can...can we go back to the part where Mikey is a robot?"  
  
Gerard freezes, his gaze snapping to her face. "Yeah...wait, you didn't know that?"  
  
"Um. _No_?" She twitches with surprise when, after gaping at her for a moment, Gerard flings his hands up in the air and runs whooping into the living room.  
  
"Mikey, Mikey," she hears him squeal. "You wanna hear something _awesome_? Lindsey didn't know you're AI! She had no idea!"  
  
A pause. "You're kinda blocking the tv, dude," says a low female voice.  
  
Gerard charges back into the kitchen, still beaming. "Wow! That's -- wow. You didn't know! I mean, you haven't seen him without his shirt on -- "  
  
" -- and she's not _going_ to," puts in the female voice. Gerard's grin looks like it's devouring his entire face.  
  
Lindsey says, "I really, really need to sit down now."  
  
-o-  
  
It takes a steaming cup of coffee, a warm blanket, and fifteen minutes of leaning against the kitchen counter, but Lindsey calms down surprisingly fast. It helps that she realizes that Gerard was not, in fact, building asexbot.  
  
"I thought you were building a sexbot," she admits. Gerard stares at her in horror. She hides behind her mug. "I'm sorry."  
  
"Oh my god! Lindsey! That's -- that'd be -- I'm their _creator_ , I _made_ them!" Gerard gestures wildly. "That'd be like -- the power imbalances! It'd be like incest!"  
  
"I'm sorry," she repeats meekly.  
  
"Is that why you -- oh. You -- oh." Gerard's voice drops with every word and he reins his hands in quickly, folding in on himself the way he gets when he's made some big realization.  
  
Lindsey stares into her coffee cup. This is ridiculous. She's twenty-four years old, she gets up onstage and spits on guys twice her size and lets Frankie hump her leg on a regular basis, but she hasn't felt this awkward since she was a tubby art nerd in high school. Beside her, Gerard is rocking again slightly.  
  
A small voice speaks tentatively from beside her feet. "Lin-Z?"  
  
She looks down. "Oh -- hey, Quozzel, what's up?"  
  
The gnome edges out from beneath the table. "Hel-lo, Lin-Z. Are you fixed?"  
  
"Am I -- what?"  
  
Beside her, Gerard makes a strangled noise. "Sometimes," he mumbles, "when somebody gets damaged, they have to go away for a while."  
  
"Oh. _Oh._ So you can fix them."  
  
Gerard nods without meeting her gaze. "They were all worried. I didn't know what to tell them."  
  
Well, shit, now she _really_ feels like a complete tool. Setting aside the coffee cup, Lindsey sits down on the floor to get on eye level with Quozzel. He's still got the painted eyeliner she put on him. "I'm totally fixed now, Quozzel. Promise."  
  
" _Good_ ," Quozzel trumpets and rolls forward to bump against her foot. He snaps down at the waist and wraps his tiny plastic arms around her ankle.  
  
"Aw, Quoz, it's okay, I -- " Lindsey's cut off by a flurry of movement as many tiny bodies leave their lurking places to crowd around her. In a blink she finds herself covered with dozens of very, very worried robots, all of them clamoring for her attention and climbing into her lap, along her shoulders. "Uh," she says to Gerard. "Help?"  
  
He's staring down at her with his lip caught between his teeth, another huge smile wavering uncertainly along the free edges of his mouth. There's a glimpse of the hunched, nervous guy who couldn't meet her eyes when she first met him, but he sits down beside her on the floor. Their knees bump. "Hey, guys, cuddle time."  
  
The 'bot tide shifts a bit in his direction and Lindsey can breathe. "Dude," says someone in the doorway. A young woman stands there, eyeing them both. Mikey stands beside her. They're holding hands. "It's like Cinderella and the forest animals. I feel like someone should be singing."  
  
"I play the bass," Lindsey offers.  
  
"Hm." The woman -- Alicia? -- gives her a onceover and Lindsey realizes that they're both examining all the ways they're similar. Alicia's got dark hair and thick eyeliner and some tattooes -- Gerard gave her _tattooes_ , Lindsey has to giggle a little at that -- but the squarely unimpressed look in Alicia's eyes comes straight from Mikey. Gerard totally made them compatible.  
  
Finally Alicia shrugs. "I have better hair."  
  
"We're going out," Mikey announces.  
  
Gerard twitches but doesn't look as unhappy as he always did before. "Be careful. And, like, watch out for Alicia, her motor functions might need some finetuning. And call me if she starts smelling like smoke. And -- "  
  
Alicia turns and saunters away from the door. Mikey shoots Gerard a little smile and follows.  
  
"They'll be okay," Lindsey says reassuringly as the two other -- the two humanoids walk out the front door.  
  
The worry eases off Gerard's face and he nods. "Mikey's smart. And I put a ninjistu course in Alicia's programming."  
  
Lindsey tosses her head back and laughs. When she looks again Gerard is staring at her, that happy grin getting a better hold on his mouth. "You're such a good robot daddy."  
  
"You're pretty good yourself," Gerard mumbles, blushing. He gestures at where Limke is tucked under Lindsey's chin, his little metal claws hooked on the collar of her shirt.  
  
"gERard," pipes Trafalagar, "CaN i haVE a giRLfRiend, TOO?" Helga squeaks and runs around in a quick circle, indicating her own hopefulness -- which, only Gerard would make a tiny robot lesbian.  
  
"Um," Gerard blinks. "Maybe?"  
  
"If you've got the moves," Lindsey adds helpfully, giggling.  
  
"Do I have moves?" Gerard asks her. He's still all pink in the face.  
  
"Totally," she tells him firmly before raising her voice to address the 'bots. "Guys? Cuddle time's over for a bit, okay? Mommy needs to molest Daddy."


End file.
